He entered the English East India Company at the age of fifteen and eventually became Clive's private secretary.[2] During the 1757 Plassey campaign against the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, John Walsh was awarded £56,000 in prize money. Upon his return to England in 1759, his fortune was estimated at £147,000, and he quickly sought to purchase the necessary trappings of aristocratic power in eighteenth century Britain: land and political influence. In late 1764, Walsh purchased the large estate of Warfield Park, near Bracknell in Berkshire and spent the next two years doing it up.[3] He was MP for Worcester from 1761 to 1780.[4] He continued to serve Robert Clive, or 'Clive of India' as he became known, and attempted to form a parliamentary interest in his favour.

Upon his death in 1795, Sir John Walsh, as he was then known, left his fortune to his niece, Margaret Walsh, and her husband, John Benn, on the condition that they change their surname to Benn-Walsh.[9] With his own fortune of £80,000 made in India while Assistant to the Resident of Benares, his brother-in-law Francis Fowke in the 1770s, John Benn-Walsh had become a very wealthy man and went on to inherit extensive estates in Warfield, Buckinghamshire, in Radnorshire, and in Ormathwaite, Cumberland and be created Baron Ormathwaite.[9]

William Chambers (architect)

Sir William Chambers was a Scottish-Swedish architect, based in London. Among his best-known works are Somerset House, London, and the pagoda at Kew. Chambers was a founder member of the Royal Academy.

Robert Clive

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive,, also known as Clive of India, Commander-in-Chief of British India, was a British military officer and East India Company official who established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Bengal. He is credited with securing a large swath of South Asia and the wealth that followed, for the British East India Company. In the process, he also turned himself into a multi-millionaire. Together with Warren Hastings he was one of the key early figures setting in motion what would later become British India. Blocking impending French mastery of India, and eventual British expulsion from the continent, Clive improvised a military expedition that ultimately enabled the East India Company to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the company to return a second time to India, Clive conspired to secure the Company's trade interests by overthrowing the Ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India, richer than Britain, at the time. Back in England, he used his success to secure an Irish barony, from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and again a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).

James Paine (architect)

James Paine (1717–1789) was an English architect.

John Montagu (Royal Navy officer)

Admiral John Montagu (1719–1795) was an English naval officer and colonial governor of Newfoundland.

Warfield

Warfield is a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire and the Borough of Bracknell Forest.

Joan Gideon Loten

Joan Gideon Loten was a Dutch servant in the colonies of the Dutch East India Company, the 29th Governor of Zeylan, Fellow of the Royal Society and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. During his time in the colonies he made collections of natural history. In 1758 he moved to Holland. Nine months after his return from the Dutch East Indies he moved to London, where he lived for 22 years and interacted with scholarly societies and shared his natural history illustrations and collections.

John Johnstone (East India Company)

John Johnstone was a Scottish nabob,
a corrupt official of the British East India Company who returned home with great wealth. Described as "a shrewd and unscrupulous business man",
he survived several scandals and became a major landowner when he returned to Scotland in 1765.

Warfield Church

Warfield Parish Church is a Grade II* listed building. It is located on Church Lane, Warfield, in Berkshire, England, ¾ of a mile north-east of the modern centre of the village. It is dedicated to the archangel Michael. The area around the church has been designated a conservation area since 1974 primarily to protect the character and nature of this historical building.